Student and guerilla filmmakers are optimists. Anthony Q. Artis explains how to avoid the four most common budgeting mistakes on a low-budget film.
Budgeting Optimism
Long before a single scene has been shot, the failure or success of your film may very well be determined by your approach to budgeting. The question is: are you being realistic or are you being optimistic with your budget? Understanding the difference is crucial to guerilla budgeting success.
Let me be blunt here. Student and guerilla filmmakers are some of the most optimistic people on earth. The very fact that you chose to go into a profession with an 80% failure rate (as in 80% of all films don’t make money) and that you honestly believe that YOU will be that rare magical filmmaker who gets a studio deal from your short film, is optimistic to say the least. I’m not knocking filmmaking optimism. You pretty much have to be optimistic to even attempt to make guerilla films. However, one area of your production that you definitely shouldn’t approach optimistically is your budget.
When it comes to budgeting, you need to be realistic and plug in all the numbers for the most-likely and worst-case scenarios. As a regular consultant to guerilla filmmakers, there are four common budgeting mistakes that I keep coming across… 1. Excluding or Discounting Items You Hope to Secure
Your roommate’s boyfriend is a camera operator for a production house and while you’re out for beers he says he can get you a free HD Varicam for a weekend, but a week before production, he has no idea what you’re talking about and says he can’t do it… The principal of the elementary school said you can shoot there for free, but the day before the shoot the school board president calls you demanding $500/day location fee…These are what I call “phantom freebies,” and they can easily send your production into a panicked tailspin. The bottom line is unless you are extremely positive that this is a sure thing, done deal, rock-solid agreement, you should leave that item in your budget at full price. Whenever possible, try to get things on paper or at least a trail of email conversations, so there’s no confusion about what you’re getting, when you’re getting it and how much it will cost you. The closer you get to production without these great deals and favors secured, the harder it will be to change course and get another camera or school or whatever it was you planned on getting for free or at a discount. Don’t let your budget be lead astray by the siren call of “free” or “cheap” unless you’re confident. Once it’s secure, then you can move that money elsewhere on your shoot.
2. Not Including a 15% Contingency
Your contingency is your “what if” money. It’s your all-purpose slush money for unexpected things that happen during production or items that run over their estimated budget. Unexpected things will ALWAYS happen in filmmaking, and it’s a pretty sure bet that at least one category of your budget WILL run over. I can’t over-emphasize how important it is to keep some contingency money in the budget on standby. Do not make the amateur mistake of eliminating your contingency as a line item to balance your final budget. (It’s like removing the seatbelts and airbags from a car to save money on the purchase price… dumb.) If you’re truly desperate and the numbers still don’t add up, you can cut that 15% figure down to 10%, but anything less than that is opening the door to hasty compromises and a potential production shut down.
3. Not Creating Alternate Budgets
Films rarely have one budget. There’s the 35mm film budget, the HD video budget, the mini-DV budget, the budget with name actors, the budget with unknown actors, etc. Each of these budgets represents an alternate production scenario based on unfolding events and access to money and resources. Once you write out your initial budget, you should then save alternate versions with different sets of line items based on all the likely scenarios. The only thing these budgets need to have in common is the grand total. Making alternate budgets further forces you to consider the true production value of each resource. Furthermore, alternate budgets will be invaluable to the decision-making process if you do suddenly have to change your production plan.
4. Overlooking a Hundred “Little Things”
Remember, the budgeting process is essentially brainstorming every cost you’re going to incur to make your shoot happen. Every cost means all those “little things” that new filmmakers often overlook such as the cost of taxes, permits, crew, dry cleaning costumes, cab fare, cell phone charges, insurance, overtime meals…on and on. All these “little things” can add up quickly and eat away at your precious contingency if they’re not in the original budget. Just because it’s little or you don’t write it down, doesn’t mean you don’t have to pay for it. Estimate what it will cost and put it in there.
Understanding the Budgeting Process
The budgeting process isn’t about math as much as it’s about thinking through your entire filmmaking process and figuring out what compromises you will have to make and where you will have to make them. If you don’t analyze and figure out these issues on paper first, you have only postponed making crucial decisions until the worst time possible…in the heat of production. When you write down and cost out every possible item you may need, you will have a production blue print in front of you, and you will quickly be able to see exactly how every budget item you add or take away affects the big picture of your shoot.
Do you really need to shoot that scene with a SteadiCam for an extra $2000.00? Or is it better to just go handheld for no money and use that $2000.00 to license the popular song you want for your opening? Should you rent a full-blown professional HD camera package? Or are you better off shooting on the much cheaper HDV format and hiring a professional editor with the extra cash? Remember, every dollar you spend here is a dollar you can’t spend there.
A Final Word
There isn’t necessarily a right or wrong answer to these issues, just a long list of choices that will impact your final film. Your job as a filmmaker is to figure out what that impact will be and decide what value that brings to your finished film. Think through your budget decisions carefully, brainstorm alternatives and try to get as many dollars as you can up on the screen.
If you build your budget on fictitious numbers or best-case scenarios with no room for error, you are building a filmmaking house of cards that will quickly collapse under the weight of the realities of production. So how do you build a budget that will hold up to the harsh realities of production? That’s easy. Plan for every conceivable cost that you may incur during shooting, then put it in your budget and come up with plans A, B, C, and D. Happy guerilla filmmaking.
Anthony Q. Artis is a veteran guerilla filmmaker and author of “Down and Dirty DV – Vol. 1: Documentaries.” He is the creator of the instructional series of guerilla filmmaking books, DVDs, and workshops at www.DownAndDirtyDV.com. He currently resides in New York City where he manages the Film and TV Production Center at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and continues to make guerilla films
Related filmmaking guides
Keep learning filmmaking
Want more lessons like this? Join StudentFilmmakers free for live webinars with working pros, and stream on-demand filmmaking classes in cinematography, directing, screenwriting, sound and post.
